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Feeling inspired after reading Arcade Game Typography: The Art of Pixel Type by Toshi Omagari, I set out to make my own 8x8 pixel font. I worked with a similar approach to the one I used in the larger grid font offstruct rgb.
First started in Adobe Illustrator, each character consists of three iterations of the same 6x6 pixel letter: in RGB Red, Green and Blue. These were layered, offset by one pixel diagonally, filling the 8x8 box. To achieve additive blending, I applied the "Lighten" transparancy setting. Combinations of overlaying these three primary RGB colours result in the secondary RGB coloured pixels Yellow, Cyan and Magenta. In the additive mixing of coloured lights, the equal blending of all three primary colours results in White. All pixels were then entered manually into the fontstructor and black pixels were added for display purposes.
Recreation of the small pixel font from the european/north american release of Climax Entertainment/Sonic! Software Planning's "Shining Force" (1992) on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
This font is unusual, as each character not only comprises two tiles (for its height), but also features characters that are wider than the maximum 8px tiles. In the game's tile set, this was achieved by using a custom encoding, where a single tile contains the combined values for two horizontal tiles.
See this short Twitter thread for a little dissection of the tile set.
The width of each character is also variable and encoded in the bottom tile for each character. Unfortunately, I was unable to work out the logic behind the width information bits - so, for characters used in the game, the correct width was matched manually, and for any characters not encountered (yet) in any of the dialog boxes, I took an educated guess...
Due to the complexity of this encoding, I won't tackle the hiragana/katakana large font from the japanese release.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included
IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS FONT IS NO LONGER BEING WORKED ON. I HAVE A BIGGER FONT TO WORK ON FOR THE TIME BEING.
YOU ARE FREE TO CLONE AND FINISH THIS FONT IF YOU WANT.
Finally done. Phew! It took two days to make this. This is a full collection of 5×7 Dot Matrix characters as seen on many devices, like Texas Instruments calculators. A lot of these are custom. Sources include TI-83, TI-86, TI-89, Casio Monochrome Graphing Calculators, Casio fx-115ES PLUS, and the rest, I created them myself. I included fractions for those themes on Microsoft Office don't have matching "1/3" and other fractions with the "1/4", "1/2", and "3/4". The fullwidth characters are substitutes for the other characters in the regular style, such as the math "x" and "y" from Casio.
Please note that character sets like Arabic and some Math Operators are beyond 5×7 pixels. If you want to know why? Because Arabic is very big and if I put it all in 5×7 pixels, the text will look weird, won't really fit inside, and there would be no point to it. I left it as is. Roman Numerals cannot fit if you were doing the "VIII" character, for example.
Enjoy!
8/28/2019: Font created.
1/7/2020: Added characters in the following form: Fullwidth and Halfwidth are used for making TI-73 Explorer characters, plus actual monospace setting characters. Note that Runic, Tagalog, and Hanunoo are replaced with character variants. The last variation of a character is from Minecraft's font. The fractions are also changed to level the line spacing. The wide "M" is never ever for use on Monospacing.
1/8/2020: More variations are added, extended to replace Buhid. I also added other math symbols and more. To type x̄, press unicode shortcut and type 01b2. To type ȳ, press unicode shortcut and type 01b3. I also added over a hundred, or two hundred, more characters to stock up on the font. Oh and I changed the filters to separate the pixels for a more pixel and retro look. Also fixed the spacing on the "Щ" character.
9/8/2020: Added a bunch of more characters to the font set.
8/25/2023: fixed the license so that the download works now.
Clone of LucasArts SCUMM - Menu. Shadow of the Menu font used for two-tone effects in "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge" by LucasArts (1991). Extra Latin Characters supplied by marioflea82. Some characters have been modified for a better presentation.
This is a cloneColor recreation of the pixel font used in Capcom's "Hyper Street Fighter 2 - The Anniversary Edition" (2004) - though it actually made its first appearance in "Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers" (1993).
This recreation uses the special TTF+SVG format, which currently has limited support.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
This is a clone of Hyper Street Fighter 2 Anniversary EditionRecreation of the pixel font from Sega's "Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse" (1990) on the Sega Mega Drive.
This font includes a full set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the tile set, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned after the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Taito's "Double Axle" (1991).
As this is my 1000th font (with most of them computer/game recreations, collated for The Video Game Font Preservation Society), it's worth noting why I chose this.
The arcade game itself is rather obscure, and not very good. However, the characters are, for the most part, very "classic arcade font" - though this font does have a few notable little quirks that make it unique (the weirdly slanted "0", the "8" with its offset counters, the mix of serif and sans serif). But most of all, what really struck me about the font is the colour treatment in game - a beautiful "desert chrome" rendition that just screams late 80s/early 90s.
This recreation uses the special OpenType SVG (TTF+SVG) format, which currently has limited support.
One minor tweak I made was to the "T", which had a very odd inbalance. Apart from that, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
I created this font for a game that I am working on called "Spektakel". The game is designed to help teenagers who are struggeling with learning dissabilities. This particular font was heavily inspired by "Open Dyslexic"
Clone of Gradius Dings. Dingbats [gender and horoscope] from Gradius / Nemesis, (C) 1985 Konami
This is a clone of Gradius DingsRecreation of the "chalkboard" pixel font used in Nintendo's 1995 Super NES classic "Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island". Only the characters used in the game have been included. The "Q", "X", "Z" and "j" are my own creation, as these characters don't seem to have been used in any of the on-screen texts I came across. Note that this font includes a few special characters, mapped to the most appropriate unicode point: the Yes/No selection arrow (mapped to "triangular bullet" U+2023), directional arrows (U+2190 - U+2193) and the circled "A" (U+24B6), "B" (U+24B7), "X" (U+24CD) and "Y" (U+24CE).
Update Sept. 2019: proper left/right double quote mark; "j" fixed; "Q", "X" and "Z" fixed; added accented characters and "ß" - note that, for some reason, the accented "e" and "i" versions have an additional pixel of letter-spacing; added ordinal "ª" and "º"; added "æ"; added "¡" and "¿" from the spanish version of the game on the Game Boy Advance - note that the regular exclamation and question marks in the spanish version are different from the English/French/German version, and this recreation keeps the ones from the latter.
Recreation of one of the pixel fonts from Video System's "Aero Fighters" (aka "Sonic Wings", 1992). This font is used for the pilot names and post-level taunts. Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the thin pixel font from Konami's "Contra: Hard Corps" (aka "Probotector", 1994) on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
This font is used for dialogue lines, such as the mission briefings and short conversations before/after boss battles.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the monospaced version of the pixel font from Square/Nintendo's "Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars" (1996) on the SNES.
This recreation uses the special TTF+SVG format, which currently has limited support. For a monochrome version, see this recreation.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
This is a clone of Super Mario RPG (Mono)Third font in a series of three colour pixel experiments, made after reading Arcade Game Typography: The Art of Pixel Type by Toshi Omagari. This one has a double shadow, which gives an extruded 3D effect at a smaller scale.
Clone of Ghouls 'N Ghosts. Font from Ghouls 'N Ghosts, (C) 1988 Capcom
This is a clone of Ghouls 'N GhostsClone of Vigilante - Kerned. Arcade Kerned version of the font from Vigilante, (C) 1988 Irem Corp.
This is a clone of Vigilante - KernedClone of Sierra Font 69 fon. Solid version of the in-game dialogue font from "Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco And The Time Rippers", (C) 1991/1992 Sierra. Use it to fill in the outline version! Sierra Resource File Tag: "68.fon"
This is a clone of Sierra Font 69 fon